5.  The applicants were born in 1951, 1959 and 1924 respectively. The first applicant lives in Sofia and the second applicant lives in Yakoruda.
6.  The third applicant, Mr Ivan Yankov Hadzhigeorgiev, who also lived in Yakoruda, passed away on 14 July 2008.
7.  The applicants are three of the heirs of Yakim and Nazari Hadzhigeorgievi. They submit that they are entitled to 75% of the inheritance. The first and second applicants are the sons of the third applicant’s late brother.
8.  In 1997 the Forests Restitution Act was adopted by the Bulgarian Parliament (see paragraph 28 below).
9.  On 30 June 1999 one of the heirs of Yakim and Nazari Hadzhigeorgievi applied for the restitution of 814,000 square metres of forestry land in the area of Yakoruda. By a decision of 9 June 2000 the competent body, the Yakoruda land commission, refused restitution, as it was not satisfied that the applicants’ ancestors had owned the land at issue.
10.  One of the heirs applied for judicial review of the above decision.
11.  By a judgment of 14 July 2000, the Razlog District Court set aside the land commission’s decision and restored to the heirs of Yakim and Nazari Hadzhigeorgievi the property rights over the plot of forestry land. It found, on the basis of documents such as an 1898 tuğra (a title deed) issued by the authorities of the Ottoman Empire to which the territory belonged at the time, and a 1910 document of the Bulgarian authorities certifying that the land had been recognised as being the ancestors’ property, that Yakim and Nazari Hadzhigeorgievi had owned the land at issue. The judgment specified the exact borders of the plot to be restituted.
12.  The judgment above was not appealed against and became final on 4 August 2000.
13.  In implementation of that judgment, by a decision of 15 August 2000 the land commission recognised and restored in actual boundaries the property rights of the heirs of Yakim and Nazari Hadzhigeorgievi. A plan of the plot was issued on 16 September 2002.
14.  Further to the provisions of the Forests Restitution Act (see paragraph 31 below), the transfer of possession of the restored property was to be effected by the land commission, replaced in 2002 by an Agriculture and Forestry Department, in the presence of a representative of the local forest authority.
15.  In September 2000 the second applicant wrote to the land commission on behalf of all heirs requesting that they enter into possession of their plot of forestry land.
16.  In 2001 the Minister of Agriculture and Forests lodged a request for reopening of the judicial proceedings described in paragraphs 10-12 above on account of new evidence and because the local forest authority had not taken part in the proceedings before the Razlog District Court.
17.  By a decision of 19 May 2002, a three-member panel of the Supreme Administrative Court dismissed the request as inadmissible. The court held that the Minister was not entitled to request reopening, that the request had been submitted out of time and that the evidence presented was the same as that presented during the restitution proceedings. Upon appeal, in a final decision of 30 July 2002, a five-member panel of the SAC upheld the three‑member panel’s findings.
18.  It appears that the Agriculture and Forestry Department refused to transfer possession during the pendency of the reopening proceedings.
19.  Once these proceedings were over, on 20 December 2002 the second applicant requested once again that the judgment of the Razlog District Court be complied with.
20.  In a letter dated 10 January 2003, the Agriculture and Forestry Department informed the second applicant that the transfer of possession would take place on 24 January 2003. However, this did not happen.
21.  Pursuant to new requests by the second applicant that the judgment of the Razlog District Court be enforced, on 22 May 2003 the Agriculture and Forestry Department invited the local forest authority to designate its representative who would attend the transfer of possession.
22.  In a letter dated 19 September 2003 to the Agriculture and Forestry Department, the forest authority stated that it considered the land at issue to be State-owned and that there had been no valid grounds for restitution. It pointed out that according to documents of 1936 and 1942 the land at issue had been declared a yaylak (a Turkish term designating a high-mountain pasture), to which the interested parties only had right of use. On that basis, the forest authority refused to participate in the transfer of possession, deeming such an action unlawful.
23.  On 4 November 2003 the regional governor of Blagoevgrad issued an act registering the plot at issue as State property.
24.  In a letter dated 26 January 2004 to the Agriculture and Forestry Department, the forest authority refused once again to participate in the transfer of possession. The Department informed the second applicant of that refusal in a letter dated 5 February 2004. It stated that it was unable to validly transfer possession in the absence of a representative of the forest authority.
25.  On 5 February 2004 the second applicant wrote to the forest authority, informing it that the Razlog District Court’s judgment of 14 July 2000 was binding on all State bodies.
26.  On 22 March, 11 May and 16 June 2004 the second applicant wrote to the Agriculture and Forestry Department, inviting it to enforce the Razlog District Court’s judgment. It is unclear whether there were any relevant developments after that.
27.  At the time of the latest communication from the parties (January 2012), the judgment had not yet been enforced.